“Awake, My Soul”: New Documentary on Sacred Harp
Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp
In Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp, filmmakers Matt and Erica Hinton put a camera where no camera has gone before: in the old fashioned rural churches of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi where young and old gather to sing Sacred Harp, an a cappella hymn-singing tradition with roots in post-Puritan New England. Sacred Harp was, the filmmakers contend, America’s first music, and though it all but disappeared with the changing trends in American music over the last century and a half, it was ultimately preserved—not by the academies and institutions, “but instead by unschooled rural southerners who sang it not for an audience, but for one another and for God.” Combining history, archival images, interviews, and candid recordings, Awake, My Soul chronicles the intriguing story behind this much-loved musical tradition.